Editions

We benchmarked endjin's JSON Schema library on .NET 8.0 and saw large performance gains. There are even more gains to be had with new .NET 8 features.

When we benchmarked endjin's AIS.NET library on .NET 8.0, we were delighted to see substantial performance gains, with no extra work required.

Investigate some ways of working with strings that prevent unnecessary memory allocations.

This blog post explores interactive notebooks in Azure Databricks. An Azure Databricks Notebook is a powerful data science tool that support exploratory data analysis, hypothesis testing, data cleaning and transformation, data visualisation, statistical modeling and machine learning.

In the ever-evolving landscape of data and analytics, the advent of AI-powered capabilities has opened up exciting possibilities for self service reporting. Tools like Copilot in Power BI and Microsoft Fabric offer users the ability to extract insights from data using natural language prompts. It's an enticing prospect, where anyone can explore, visualize, and analyze data without being constrained by pre-canned reports or relying on data engineering teams. However, as we start to embrace these new capabilities, it's essential to strike a balance between the potential benefits and potential pitfalls.

Microsoft Fabric unifies Power BI, Data Factory & Data Lake on Synapse infrastructure, reducing cost & time while enabling citizen data science.

Eli joined endjin as part of the Software Engineering Apprenticeship 2021 cohort. In this post she reflects on her first two years.

As Charlotte's placement comes to an end, she reflects on her year at endjin, highlighting her experiences to take back to University with her

Charlotte is studying for a Bachelor of Engineering - BEng (Hons), Computer Science at the University of York. She was part of our 2021 internship cohort, and is spending her Year in Industry placement with endjin too. In this post she reflects on her first 6 months.

Explore the benefits of Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) in technical design, with real-world examples applied to different scenarios.

Performing certain deployment operations from a cloud-based CI/CD agent against resources that are only accessible via private networking are problematic. The often-cited solution is to use your own hosted agents that are also connected to the same private networks, however, this introduces additional costs and maintenance overhead. This post discusses an approach that combines the use of cloud-based CI/CD agents with 'just-in-time' allow-listing as an alternative to operating your own private agents.

Why you should make writing unit tests a regular practice and how they will improve your code. This blog explains how to write unit tests in PowerShell using Pester.

Enabling 2FA is a must, but can often be perceived as a blocker for UI automation testing. Here's how to configure your AAD or MSA 2FA profile so that you can automate auth with a Time-based One-Time Password

Explore using Python virtual environments & Poetry on Windows for smoother workflows, with a script & guide to enhance your dependency management experience.

This series will follow our ongoing journey of migrating the CI/CD pipelines for our many Open Source repositories, from Azure DevOps to GitHub Actions.

This blog post explores interactive notebooks in Azure Databricks. An Azure Databricks Notebook is a powerful data science tool that support exploratory data analysis, hypothesis testing, data cleaning and transformation, data visualisation, statistical modeling and machine learning.

Microsoft Fabric unifies Power BI, Data Factory & Data Lake on Synapse infrastructure, reducing cost & time while enabling citizen data science.

Explore OneLake, Microsoft Fabric's core storage for data in Azure & other clouds. Discover its role in Fabric workloads, the OneDrive equivalent for data storage.

Ralph Kimble's 1996 principles of dimensional modelling for Star Schemas remain relevant in Cloud Native Analytics.

In this post I describe how adopting a product mindset will help you to extract maximum value from Microsoft Fabric.

Explore building situational awareness and leveraging strategic opportunities with Microsoft Fabric in this concise overview.

Serverless data architectures enable leaner data insights and operations. How do you reap the rewards while avoiding the potential pitfalls?

New Azure Synapse Analytics service offers SQL Serverless for on-demand data lake queries. We tested its potential as a Data Lake Analytics replacement.

Have you or are you about to invest in Azure Databricks? If so, the new Spark offering in Azure Synapse Analytics is likely to have grabbed your attention and rightly so. Why is Microsoft putting yet another Spark offering on the table and what does it mean for you?

In this post I describe how adopting a product mindset will help you to extract maximum value from Microsoft Fabric.

Explore building situational awareness and leveraging strategic opportunities with Microsoft Fabric in this concise overview.

Explore Microsoft Fabric, inspired by Data Mesh, for a data-driven strategy. Learn to approach a Data Mesh vision using this powerful tool.

In this post we compare Azure Synapse Analytics with Microsoft Fabric to understand how features map from Synapse to Fabric.

Eli joined endjin as part of the Software Engineering Apprenticeship 2021 cohort. In this post she reflects on her first two years.

Do you struggle to manage conflicting demands from multiple stakeholders, even when they have agreed about the relative priority of their requests? Apply a budgeting methodology to agile projects for better planning and communication with the team and wider stakeholders.

Learn about the thinking behind endjin's Power BI Maturity assessment by applying Wardley Doctrine, and asking more questions.

Ralph Kimble's 1996 principles of dimensional modelling for Star Schemas remain relevant in Cloud Native Analytics.

In this post I describe how adopting a product mindset will help you to extract maximum value from Microsoft Fabric.

Explore building situational awareness and leveraging strategic opportunities with Microsoft Fabric in this concise overview.

Microsoft Fabric unifies data & analytics, building on Azure Synapse Analytics for improved data-level interoperability. Explore its offerings & pros/cons.

Databricks notebooks provide an interactive and collaborative environment for developing code while applying software engineering best practices, such as source control. This blog post provides a step by step guide of how to implement source control in Databricks.

Wishing Azure Synapse Analytics had support for SQL notebooks? Fear not, it's easy to take advantage rich interactive notebooks for SQL Pools and SQL on Demand.

Polyglot Notebooks' PowerShell support enhances IT Ops with robust, repeatable processes via 'executable documentation'.

Open-source software has become an essential part of many organisation's software supply chain, however, this poses challenges with license compliance and security assurance.

Implement Python data validation with Pandera & Great Expectations in this comparison of their features and use cases.

Explore the benefits of Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) in technical design, with real-world examples applied to different scenarios.

Do you struggle to manage conflicting demands from multiple stakeholders, even when they have agreed about the relative priority of their requests? Apply a budgeting methodology to agile projects for better planning and communication with the team and wider stakeholders.

For the first time since 2020, a new release of Rx.NET is available, supporting .NET 6 and .NET 7.

Monetizing your APIs is a complex challenge; creating your business, revenue, & pricing model, then translating into a technical implementation requires significant investment. Working with the Azure API Management team we provide guidance, videos and code to help accelerate your journey.

Some of my thoughts inspired whilst helping out on the farm over the weekend. What is the future of work given the increasing presence of machines in our day to day lives? In which situations can AI deliver greatest value? How can we ease the stress of digital transformation on people who are impacted by it?

Serverless data architectures enable leaner data insights and operations. How do you reap the rewards while avoiding the potential pitfalls?

Some of my thoughts inspired whilst helping out on the farm over the weekend. What is the future of work given the increasing presence of machines in our day to day lives? In which situations can AI deliver greatest value? How can we ease the stress of digital transformation on people who are impacted by it?

Wishing Azure Synapse Analytics had support for SQL notebooks? Fear not, it's easy to take advantage rich interactive notebooks for SQL Pools and SQL on Demand.

Tracking down unexpected allocations in a high-performance .NET parsing library.

This is a summary of the sessions I attended at SQLbits 2023 in Newport Wales, which is Europe's largest expert led data conference.

This is a summary of the sessions I attended at SQLbits 2022 in London, which is Europe's largest expert led data conference.

Some of my thoughts inspired whilst helping out on the farm over the weekend. What is the future of work given the increasing presence of machines in our day to day lives? In which situations can AI deliver greatest value? How can we ease the stress of digital transformation on people who are impacted by it?

Ralph Kimble's 1996 principles of dimensional modelling for Star Schemas remain relevant in Cloud Native Analytics.

In this post I describe how adopting a product mindset will help you to extract maximum value from Microsoft Fabric.

Explore building situational awareness and leveraging strategic opportunities with Microsoft Fabric in this concise overview.

After a year of working on implementing the OpenChain specification, this blog takes you through the processes we created to track and manage our open-source licenses

For the first time since 2020, a new release of Rx.NET is available, supporting .NET 6 and .NET 7.

This blog shows how to transform a document based format to a tabular format whilst managing all the nested properties

Open-source software has become an essential part of many organisation's software supply chain, however, this poses challenges with license compliance and security assurance.

When implementing OpenChain, understanding the specification will help guide your organisation to having processes in place to review and manage open-source software

The key risks associated with open-source software, from whether you use it minimally, to using it throughout all your systems.

Ralph Kimble's 1996 principles of dimensional modelling for Star Schemas remain relevant in Cloud Native Analytics.

Microsoft Fabric unifies Power BI, Data Factory & Data Lake on Synapse infrastructure, reducing cost & time while enabling citizen data science.

Microsoft Fabric unifies data & analytics, building on Azure Synapse Analytics for improved data-level interoperability. Explore its offerings & pros/cons.

In this post we compare Azure Synapse Analytics with Microsoft Fabric to understand how features map from Synapse to Fabric.

Implement Python data validation with Pandera & Great Expectations in this comparison of their features and use cases.

Explore using Python virtual environments & Poetry on Windows for smoother workflows, with a script & guide to enhance your dependency management experience.

Open-source software has become an essential part of many organisation's software supply chain, however, this poses challenges with license compliance and security assurance.

When implementing OpenChain, understanding the specification will help guide your organisation to having processes in place to review and manage open-source software

The key risks associated with open-source software, from whether you use it minimally, to using it throughout all your systems.

Monetizing your APIs is a complex challenge; creating your business, revenue, & pricing model, then translating into a technical implementation requires significant investment. Working with the Azure API Management team we provide guidance, videos and code to help accelerate your journey.

Microsoft recently shot a video interviewing endjin co-founder, Howard van Rooijen, and Director of Engineering, James Broome, about how Microsoft has helped endjin grow over the past decade. This posts the top 10 ways in which Microsoft helped - from providing access to valuable software and services, to opening up sales channels, to helping to navigate the minefield of UK Financial Services regulations around cloud adoption.

In this post we discuss the characteristics of a great FinTech startup, and the importance of the API Economy to innovation in Financial Services.

Do you struggle to manage conflicting demands from multiple stakeholders, even when they have agreed about the relative priority of their requests? Apply a budgeting methodology to agile projects for better planning and communication with the team and wider stakeholders.

Learn about the thinking behind endjin's Power BI Maturity assessment by applying Wardley Doctrine, and asking more questions.

This is a summary of the sessions I attended at SQLbits 2023 in Newport Wales, which is Europe's largest expert led data conference.

If the audience for your Power BI report is larger than 12 people, then statistically 1 of your audience suffers from Colour Vision Deficiency. In this post we will talk through how we experimented with colour to develop an accessible colour palette and why colour and contrast is important when it comes to data visualisation.

In this post we will talk through how to expand on a data team's creative skillset, without access to specialist photo editing software such as Photoshop or Illustrator.

In this blog post explore using Field Parameters to dynamically switch between measures in visuals, enhancing report analysis capabilities.

If the audience for your Power BI report is larger than 12 people, then statistically 1 of your audience suffers from Colour Vision Deficiency. In this post we will talk through how we experimented with colour to develop an accessible colour palette and why colour and contrast is important when it comes to data visualisation.

In this post we will talk through how to expand on a data team's creative skillset, without access to specialist photo editing software such as Photoshop or Illustrator.

In this blog post explore using Field Parameters to dynamically switch between measures in visuals, enhancing report analysis capabilities.